Mina (singer) - Legacy

Legacy

Mina has scored 77 albums and 71 singles on the Italian charts. She is the only artist to land an album at the top of the Italian charts in each of the five decades from the start of record keeping in 1965. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi presented her with the Second Class of the Italian Order of Merit on 1 June 2001.

British singer Dusty Springfield referenced Mina in performance. A number of Mina's songs were turned into hits by singers in other languages. The first of these was "Piano", scored by Matt Monro as "Softly, as I Leave You", which reached #10 in the UK Top 40. In 1964, the song reached #27 of the Billboard Hot 100 in the version by Frank Sinatra. "Se telefonando" was covered by several performers in Italy and abroad, most notably by Françoise Hardy and Iva Zanicchi (1966), Delta V (2005), Vanessa and the O's (2007), and Neil Hannon (2008). "Grande grande grande", recorded by Shirley Bassey as "Never Never Never" in 1973, reached the Billboard Hot 100, UK Top 10, #1 of the Australian charts, #2 in South Africa and #3 in Singapore. A year later, Dalida and Alain Delon recorded the French version of "Parole parole" and made it an international hit. Mexican icon José José recorded the Spanish version of the hit "Sono, come tu mi vuoi", entitled "Soy como quieras tú". English musician Elvis Costello used a sample from Mina's "Un bacio è troppo poco" on his album When I Was Cruel. Tanita Tikaram covered Mina's "And I Think of You - E penso a te" in English as a track on the album The Best of Tanita Tikaram. In 2010, Chicago band La Scala released a rock cover of her hit "Tu Farai" with Gretta Rochelle on vocals.

Spanish artist Mónica Naranjo enregistered an entirely album with covers translated to Spanish of the discography from Mina, the album was published Mars, 20 1999 and entiteled Minage. The covered songs included "Ancora, ancora, ancora", "Io é te da soli", "Fiume azzurro" and "L'immensità". Mina collaborated with the album recording the duet "Él se encuentra entre tú y yo" ("He is between you and me").

To celebrate Mina's 70th anniversary, the la Repubblica newspaper held a reader's poll to pick Mina's best song of all time. In a vote of 30,000 participants, "Se telefonando" emerged at the top of the list.